“It was a bit of a guard change,” Padalecki says, “But it wasn’t abrupt.
She’s been a big part of the show for many, many years. On that note,
the show had to change a little bit. Eric’s already said that he had a
5-year arc for the show, so now that’s ended, we’ve had to change the
actual show a bit.”

Jensen Ackles who recently directed his first episode, was impressed with all that Kripke had been in charge of previously. “Eric controlled the size of the script. How big it was, how many
characters were written, how many different locations there were, and he
was able to really dial it back and make it a doable show within our
budget and the time frame that we were filming,” Ackles said.